Jerome Lindon: Visionary Publisher

Sarah Coleman

"He's terribly nice, this young chap," said Samuel Beckett in 1951 of the 26-year-old editor who had just published Molloy, Beckett's first novel. "Especially when I think he's facing bankruptcy because of me." For his part, editor Jerome Lindon knew he was taking a gamble on the maverick Irishman's work: It had been rejected by every other major publisher in Paris. Still, he later recalled, "I couldn't understand how people could fail to be dazzled by such a meteor."

Lindon, who died in Paris on April 9 aged 75, was a lifelong champion of new writing. "He liked writers who worked far away from money and televisions and who attempted to tame the world with the power of their words," wrote Daniel Rondeau in L'Express of Paris. The son of a Jewish lawyer, Lindon was a French Resistance fighter who, at the age of 23, bought a tiny underground press called Les Editions de Minuit (Midnight Editions) and turned it into a powerhouse of French publishing.

A sober presence—"tall, slim, and distinguished, he never dined in town and resisted attention," according to Paris' Le Figaro—Lindon edited such writers as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, and three Nobel Prize winners: Claude Simon, Elie Wiesel and Beckett.

Commercial success did not dim his enthusiasm for political controversy, and in the late 1950s he attracted notoriety by publishing La Question, a book about the French military's use of torture in Algeria. Fined for inciting military disobedience, Lindon remained faithful to the Algerian cause. "I am Samuel Beckett's publisher," he explained. "When one has this chance, the least one can do is defend the conditions of freedom where they are threatened."

In later years, changes in the publishing world presented Lindon with his biggest challenge. But while other literary publishers diversified or sold out to conglomerates, Lindon was faithful to his original vision. Under his direction, Les Editions de Minuit continued to publish around 20 books a year from its base near the literary café Les Deux Magots. "In an era of multimedia, he remained a craftsman, as passionate as he was engaged," wrote Le Figaro. In The Independent of London, British publisher John Calder remembered his friend as "the best-known and most highly respected figure of his generation and profession."